The Flanders Panel (35 page)

“What fire?”

“In your apartment.” Max laughed mirthlessly. “That was part of the plan. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry!” Julia thumped the table in stunned indignation. “Good God, you have the nerve to tell me you’re sorry!” She looked at the walls and then at Max. “You must both have been completely mad to think up something like that.”

“We were perfectly sane, actually, and nothing would have gone wrong. Menchu would have faked some kind of accident, a discarded cigarette, for example. And with the amount of solvents and paint in your apartment… We’d decided that she should stay there until the last minute and then leave, choking on the smoke, hysterical and calling for help. Before the firemen managed to get there, half the building would be in flames.” He made a face of crude apology and regret. “Everyone would assume that the Van Huys had gone up in flames along with everything else. You can imagine the rest. I’d sell the painting in Portugal to a private collector we were already negotiating with… In fact, the day we met in the Rastro, Menchu and I had just seen the middleman. As for the fire, Menchu would have accepted responsibility; but since she was your friend and it was an accident, the charges wouldn’t have been that serious. A charge brought by the owners, perhaps, but nothing more. What delighted her most, she said, was the thought of Montegrifo’s face when he found out.”

Julia, incredulous, shook her head.

“Menchu wasn’t capable of doing something like that.”

“Menchu, like all of us, was capable of anything.”

“God, you’re a bastard, Max.”

“At this stage, what
I
am isn’t terribly important.” Max’s face took on a look of defeat. “What does matter is that it took me quite a while to bring the car round and park it in your street. The fog was really thick and I couldn’t find a parking place. That’s why I kept looking at my watch; I was worried you might turn up any minute. It must have been about quarter past twelve when I went upstairs again. I didn’t ring. I opened the door with the key. Menchu was in the hall, lying on her back, with her eyes wide open. At first I thought she must have fainted out of sheer nervousness, but when I knelt down by her side I saw the bruise on her throat. She was dead, Julia, and she was still warm. I panicked. I knew that if I called the police, I’d have a hell of a lot of explaining to do. So I threw the keys on the floor, closed the door and went racing down the stairs. I couldn’t think. I spent the night in a pension, absolutely terrified. I didn’t sleep a wink. Then in the morning, at the airport… Well, you know the rest of the story.”

“Was the painting still in the house when you found Menchu dead?”

“Yes. That was the only thing I noticed apart from her. It was on the sofa, wrapped up in newspaper and tape, just as I’d left it.” He gave a bitter laugh. “But I didn’t have the guts to take it with me. I was in enough trouble already.”

“You say Menchu was in the hall? Yet she was found in the bedroom. Did you see the scarf round her neck?”

“There was no scarf. She had nothing round her neck, and her neck was broken. She’d been killed by a blow to the throat.”

“And the bottle?”

“Don’t you start on about that bloody bottle. All the police keep asking me is why I stuck that bottle up Menchu’s cunt. I swear I don’t know what they’re talking about.” He put what remained of his cigarette to his lips and inhaled deeply, nervously, giving Julia a suspicious look. “Menchu was dead, that’s all. Killed by a single blow and nothing else. I didn’t move her. I was only there for about a minute. Someone else must have done that afterwards.”

“Afterwards? When? According to you, the murderer had already left.”

Max frowned, trying to remember.

“I don’t know.” He seemed genuinely confused. “Perhaps he came back later, after I left.” Then he turned pale as if he’d just realised something. “Or perhaps…” Julia saw that his cuffed hands were trembling. “Perhaps he was still there, hidden. Waiting for you.”

They’d decided to share the work. While Julia visited Max and subsequently recounted the story to the Inspector, who listened to her without even trying to disguise his scepticism, Cesar and Munoz made enquiries amongst the neighbours. The three of them met in an old cafe in Calle del Prado in the evening. Max’s story was scrutinised from all angles during a prolonged discussion round the marble table, the ashtray overflowing and the table crowded with empty cups. They leaned towards each other, like conspirators, talking in low voices.

“I believe Max,” concluded Cesar. “What he says makes sense. After all, the story about stealing the painting is just the sort of thing he’d do. And I can’t believe he was capable of doing the rest… The bottle of gin
was
too much, my dears. Even for a man like him. On the other hand, we know that the woman in the raincoat was also around. Lola Belmonte, Nemesis or whoever she turns out to be.”

“Why not Beatrice of Ostenburg?” asked Julia.

Cesar looked at her reprovingly.

“I find that kind of joke completely uncalled for.” He shifted nervously in his seat, looked at Munoz, whose face was a blank, and then, half-joking, half-serious, held up his hands, as if warding off ghosts. “The woman who was prowling round your building was flesh and blood. At least I hope she was.”

He had discreetly interrogated the porter in the building opposite, whom he knew by sight. From him, Cesar had found out a few useful facts. For example, around twelve, just when he was finishing sweeping the hallway, the porter had seen a tall young man, his hair in a ponytail, come out of the front door of Julia’s building and walk up the street to a car parked by the kerb. Shortly afterwards - and Cesar’s voice grew hoarse with sheer excitement, as it did when he was recounting some high-class bit of social tittle-tattle - perhaps half an hour later, when the porter was taking in the rubbish bin, he’d passed a blonde woman wearing dark glasses and a raincoat. Cesar lowered his voice as he said this, looking around apprehensively, as if the woman might be sitting at one of the nearby tables. The porter, it seems, didn’t get a good look at her because she was walking up the street, in the same direction as the young man. Nor could he say with certainty that the woman had come out of Julia’s front door. He’d simply turned round with the rubbish bin in his hand and there she was. No, he hadn’t told the policemen who questioned him that morning because they hadn’t asked him about that. He wouldn’t have thought of it, the porter confessed, scratching his head, if Don Cesar hadn’t asked him. No, he didn’t notice if she was carrying a large package. He’d just seen a blonde woman walking along the street. And that was that.

“The street,” said Munoz, “is full of blonde women.”

“All wearing dark glasses and a raincoat?” commented Julia. “It could have been Lola Belmonte. I was with Don Manuel at the time. And neither she nor her husband was at home.”

“No,” said Munoz, “by midday you were already with me, at the chess club. We walked for about an hour and got to your apartment about one o’clock.” He looked at Cesar, whose eyes responded with a flicker of mutual intelligence that did not go unnoticed by Julia. “If the murderer was waiting for you, he must have had to change his plans when you didn’t turn up. So he took the painting and left. Perhaps that saved your life.”

“Why did he kill Menchu?”

“Perhaps he wasn’t expecting to find her there and eliminated her as an inconvenient witness,” Munoz said. “The move he’d planned might not have been queen takes rook. It’s possible it was all a brilliant improvisation.”

Cesar raised a shocked eyebrow.

“Calling it ‘brilliant’ is a bit much, my dear.”

“Call it what you like. Changing the move like that, on the spur of the moment, coming up with an instant variant appropriate to the situation and placing the card with the corresponding notation next to the body…” The chess player reflected on this. “I had a chance to have a look at it. The note was even typed, on Julia’s Olivetti, according to Feijoo. And there were no fingerprints. Whoever did it acted with great calm, but also with speed and efficiency. Like a machine.”

Julia suddenly remembered Munoz, hours before, while they waited for the police to come, kneeling by Menchu’s corpse, not touching anything and saying nothing, studying the murderer’s visiting card as coolly as if he were sitting before a chessboard at the Capablanca Club.

“I still don’t understand why Menchu opened the door.”

“Because she thought it was Max,” suggested Cesar.

“No,” said Munoz. “He had the key, which we found on the floor when we arrived. She knew it wasn’t Max.”

Cesar sighed, turning the topaz ring round and round on his finger.

“I’m not surprised the police are hanging onto Max for all they’re worth,” he said, sounding demoralised. “There aren’t any other suspects. And at this rate, soon there won’t be any more victims left either. If Senor Munoz continues to stick strictly to his deductive systems, it’s going to end up - I can see it now - with you, my dear Munoz, surrounded by corpses, like the final act of
Hamlet,
and being forced to the inevitable conclusion: ‘I am the only survivor, therefore, according to strict logic, discounting all impossible suspects, that is, those who are already dead, the murderer must be me…’ and then giving yourself up to the police.”

“That’s not necessarily so,” said Munoz.

“That you’re the murderer? Forgive me, my dear friend, but this conversation is beginning to sound dangerously like a dialogue in a madhouse. I never for one minute thought…”

“I don’t mean that.” The chess player was studying his hands, holding his empty cup. “I’m talking about what you said a moment ago: that there are no more suspects.”

“You don’t mean,” murmured Julia, “that you’ve got someone else in mind?”

Munoz looked at her for a long time. Then he clicked his tongue, put his head a little to one side and said:

“Possibly.”

Julia protested and begged him to explain, but neither she nor Cesar could get a word out of him. Munoz was gazing absently at the empty stretch of table between his hands, as if he could see in the marbled surface the mysterious moves of imaginary chess pieces. From time to time the vague smile, behind which he shielded himself when he preferred not to be drawn into things, would drift across his lips like a fleeting shadow.

The Seventh Seal

In the fiery gap he had seen
something unbearably awesome,
the full horror of the abysmal depths
of chess.
Vladimir Nabokov

“Naturally,” Paco Montegrifo said, “this regrettable incident will not affect our agreement.”

“Thank you.”

“There’s no need to thank me. We know you had nothing to do with what happened.”

The director of Claymore’s had gone to visit Julia at the workshop in the Prado, taking advantage, he said when he turned up there unexpectedly, of an interview with the director of the museum with a view to their buying a Zurbaran commended to his company. He’d found her in the middle of injecting an adhesive made from glue and honey into an area of incipient flaking on a triptych attributed to Duccio di Buoninsegna. Julia, who was not in a position to stop what she was doing, greeted Montegrifo with a hurried nod of her head while she pressed the plunger of the syringe to inject the mixture. The auctioneer seemed delighted to have surprised her
in flagrante
— as he said, at the same time bestowing on her his most brilliant smile. He’d sat down on one of the tables to watch her.

Julia felt uncomfortable and did her best to finish what she was doing quickly. She protected the treated area with water-repellent paper and placed a bag filled with sand on top, taking care to mould it carefully to the surface of the painting.

“A marvellous piece of work,” said Montegrifo, indicating the painting. “About 1300, isn’t it? The Master Buoninsegna, if I’m not mistaken.”

“That’s right. The museum acquired it a few months ago.” Julia looked critically at the results of her labours. “I’ve had some problems with the gold leaf along the edge of the Virgin’s cloak. In some places it’s been lost completely.”

Montegrifo leaned over the triptych, studying it with a professional eye.

“It’s still a magnificent effort,” he said when he’d finished examining it. “Like all your work.”

“Thank you.”

The auctioneer gave her a look of deepest sympathy.

“Although, naturally,” he said, “there’s no comparison with our dear Flanders panel.”

“Of course not. With all due respect to the Duccio.”

They both smiled. Montegrifo tugged at his immaculate shirt cuffs to ensure that the required inch was showing below the sleeves of his navy blue double-breasted jacket, enough to reveal the gold cuff links bearing his initials. He was wearing a pair of impeccable grey trousers and, despite the rainy weather, his black Italian shoes gleamed.

“Do you have any news of the Van Huys?” Julia asked.

The auctioneer adopted an expression of elegant melancholy.

“Alas, no.” Although the floor was strewn with sawdust, paper and splashes of paint, he made a point of dropping the ash from his cigarette in the ashtray. “But we’re in contact with the police. The Belmonte family have put me in charge of all negotiations.” The look on his face was one that managed simultaneously to praise the owners’ good sense in doing so and regret that they had not done so before. “The paradoxical thing, Julia, is that if
The Game of Chess
ever does turn up, this whole unfortunate series of events will send the price sky high.”

“I’m sure it will. But, as you said, that’s if it ever does turn up.”

“You don’t seem very optimistic.”

“After what I’ve been through the last few days, I don’t really have much reason to be.”

“I understand. But I have faith in the police investigation. Or in luck.

And if we do manage to recover the painting and put it up for auction, I can assure you it will be a real event.“ He smiled as if he had a marvellous present for her in his pocket. ”Have you read
Art and Antiques?
They’ve dedicated five colour pages to the story. We’ve had endless phone calls from specialist journalists. And the
Financial Times
is doing an article on it next week. By the way, some of those journalists asked to be put in touch with you.“